Page 36 of The Reunion

“I’d like to see Bob Renfro try singing ‘Midnight’ while wearingfour-inch heels,” Ford says under his breath, and Millie laughs—but Bob Renfro’s comments, though scathing, were spot-on. Millie wasn’t exactly cast for her acting skills back at age five, and they haven’t improved much since then.

Ford unsuccessfully tries to get a group together for dinner—Sasha-Kate rushed out as soon as we finished, and Ransom says he has plans. My heartbeat picks up in my throat, knowingIam the plans.

“Livvie? You in?”

“Can’t tonight, Ford, sorry. Rain check?”

“Holding you to it,” he says. “Guess it’s just me and Millie, then.”

Millie’s cheeks are on fire. “I wish I could, but… um… public places have become a logistical nightmare this week.”

Ford wisely doesn’t push it. With the amount of publicity Millie’s getting these days, his personal life would be a wreck if they were caught out together just the two of them, even as friends—no one cares about truth, only headlines. And those headlines would absolutely make their way to Juliette in a heartbeat, even on a remote film set in Iceland.

Which is precisely why, even though my phone lights up with a text before we’ve even left the studio—your place it is, how about 7:30?—Ransom and I leave every bit as separately as we arrived. I don’t want us in headlines.

Not when the fandom is still reeling over Gemma, those leaked texts blasted to every corner of the internet this weekend.

Not when there’s not even anusto be written about.

My place at 7:30 sounds perfect, I reply as I slip into the back of Jimmy’s Mercedes.Should I pick anything up for us?Too late, I realize my phrasing sounds a little too close to date territory, like I’m suggesting dinner.

It’s not a date.

To snack on, I’m about ready to add, but his text comes back so quickly it’s like he was waiting for mine:got it covered, see you tonight

For this not being a date, I’m feeling surprisingly fizzy inside.

The first time I felt feelings for him start to flare up, so many years ago and especially on that flight to Shanghai, I had to train them out of me when it was clear he didn’t think of me like that—as anything morethan a best friend, a particularly close costar. He never would have gone after Kylie, the tour director’s daughter, if he had; never would have confided in me all the details of his feelings for her from first hookup to messy breakup.

I spent so many months back then trying to convince myself we were better off as friends,bestfriends who also happened to have incredible on-screen chemistry. As best friends, we could enjoy each other without risking a messy breakup. As costars, we could enjoy countless inside jokes and endless days on set together, all while making bank off of said chemistry. Why risk ruining it all?

Except then, in our final season, our scenes were more intimate than ever, blurring the line between fiction and reality all the more. So many times on set, it never felt like acting. We were closer than ever off-screen, too, both of us confiding things in the other we’d never told anyone else. He was my best friend, and I was his, and it sometimes felt like we were teetering on the edge of more.

But I was wrong then, too: one thing led to another, and one step back turned into a total break.

Then came the end of the show. With it, the end of us.

Now that Ransom and I are together on set again, the years between us feel like a long, looping detour: it’s like we’ve picked up at the exact same spot. We’re older now, our skin thicker—but underneath it all, we’re still Liv and Ransom, whose foundation was each other for so, so long.

I feel the exact same spark between us, the exact same chemistry.

More of both, if I’m honest.

And though I try not to think about them, I feel the exact same fears, and new ones, too: that I’ll let him in—even closer than before, at the rate we’re trending—only for us to be torn apart in spectacular fashion all over again.

Rumors of Fanline Merger with CMC/Snapaday

By Anna Lindell // Associate Editor, Arts & Entertainment,Sunset Central

Rumors began to circulate this weekend after Fanline founder and CEO Shine Jacobs was spotted at bougie brunch spot Travelo with Marco Ferracora, CEO of television giant CMC (known most recently for their multimillion-dollar acquisition of social media site Snapaday).

Jacobs, who became a household name three years ago after taking Fanline from simple online media hub to the premier streaming service in the industry, has notoriously refused a handful of acquisition offers in the past, to her obvious benefit. But could this brunch signal a change in the wind? And if so, who would be acquiring whom?

It’s tough to say. Some speculate there may be trouble beneath the surface of Fanline’s flashy neon logo: that their acquisition of the rights toGirl on the Verge’s upcoming twentieth-reunion special—and a rumored, still unconfirmed reboot to follow—was a last-ditch effort to draw viewers to the platform. Others insist they wouldn’t have been able to acquire said rights in the first place without significant resources; we need only reflect onthe cast’s infamous salary negotiationsto surmise that’s definitely a point in favor of Fanline doing much better than its detractors might argue—that not only are they surviving in this present market, they’re thriving.

Enter CMC.

The California Media Corporation, or CMC, has been gathering up speed this past decade and expanding its acquisitions far beyond the coast for which it is named—prior to the Snapaday acquisition, CMC snapped up a trio of print, broadcast, and film conglomerates based in Milan, Bangladesh, and São Paulo. With Snapaday, they expanded their social media footprint; now, the only horizon left unturned is a streaming service. Most of Fanline’s rights catalog is a bit dated, though—and while said catalog will be a perennial vein of rich income for decades into the future, some say they need a current hit to do more than break even, especially after dropping such massive bank on the Snapaday deal.

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